... It seems to me this would fit the facts of its discovery better. ...

Which facts? Hannover, K.M. 1979.49 was purchased in 1970 at the art market / private property (?). The head was supposedly found in the late thirties, together with an associated blue crown and two fragments of statues of queens in Ashmunein. But this indication of origin could have been invented simply to the piece to connect it with the excavations by Roeder, to make it more interesting / authentically.

The origin of Paris, Louvre E 11076 is not secure. Amarna counts as likely. Only the origin of Berlin, ÄMP 21360 is secured.

MarcMara wrote:

... And there is a definite hint of a spinal problem in the pose - that would fit with what is suggested by Tut's need for support when standing, his collection of staffs and so on ...

I assume you speak about the convex, curved outward shape of the neck. This is considered to be typical for depictions of Akhenaten and is frequently used for the identification of the king when he is depicted together with his queen in relief, without inscription.

Could this actually be the boy-king Tutankhamun - when he was still Tutankhaten... It could be a portrait of the new Pharaoh while he was still living at Akhetaten.

It seems to me this would fit the facts of its discovery better. And there is a definite hint of a spinal problem in the pose - that would fit with what is suggested by Tut's need for support when standing, his collection of staffs and so on...
Whatcha think?

I agree it does look a bit like Tutankhamun, but only in the mouth, and only of statues of Tutankhamun once adult. This statue doesn't match Akhenaten or Nefertiti but is clearly a family member. I'll take a guess at Meritaten or Smenkhkare. An outstanding piece.

Hannover, K.M. 1979.49 was, as usual with statues of this kind, originally painted. The colors have been identified with certainty, the skin of the face was kept in red-brown. Thus the gender of the person depicted is well established, it is a man.

A typical characteristic of depictions of Akhenaten, as already mentioned before, is the thin and outwardly curved neck. Distinctive is the pointed and pulled down low chin. The little bent, almost in a straight angle to the ear towards increasing mandibula and an upward curved chin plate are also typical for Akhenaten (Munro, 1973).

Hi Lutz - I was assuming we are dealing with statues from late Akhetaten/Amarna, based on the style of garb and carving, etc. And if they are from the workshop of Tuthmosis, the similarity with sculptures of the mature Nefertiti are clear in the sculpting style and family resemblance.

As you give proof this is a male Pharaoh, and he is obviously very young, this makes Tutankhamun a clear candidate. The only other option seems to be a young Smenkhare.
(It cannot be a young Akhenaton for the reasons above, as why would a sculptor be making a retrospective statue of a male adult...)_________________We All Share The One Heart

... I was assuming we are dealing with statues from late Akhetaten/Amarna, based on the style of garb and carving, etc. ...

We do, based also on the fact that it is a sign of these later works that the representations are more moderate, less expressive than at the beginning of the "new" style, known for example from the monumental statues in Karnak.

MarcMara wrote:

... And if they are from the workshop of Tuthmosis, the similarity with sculptures of the mature Nefertiti are clear in the sculpting style and family resemblance. ...

This has nothing to do with the "workshop" I think. The similarity of representations of the king and queen until almost out of the interchangeability is a well-known fact from the beginning. This makes the whole thing so difficult. About the idea behind it, we can only speculate.

There were several sculpture workshops at Amarna. How many comparable across the country must remain open. We must not forget that we are talking ultimately about art, dictated by the government, which had to convey a message. No one can really tell how far the representations are indeed realistic.

MarcMara wrote:

... As you give proof this is a male Pharaoh, ...

Not I, the Doerner-Institute in Munich. They made the scientific investigations.

MarcMara wrote:

... and he is obviously very young, this makes Tutankhamun a clear candidate. ...

As I said, we speak about ideological dominated art. We must therefore expect that the apparent age of the person depicted is not the actual equivalent. A good example for this are the statues of Amenhotep III. Official sculptures created following his 30th year of reign make him seem boyish, childish. It is clear he may not have been this. The reasons are definately ideological.

I don`t like this look-a-like-contests. They remain ultimately always speculation, especially if one has not really a piece that is clearly identified with one person. So I save my comments on Semenchkara.

The provenance of the Louvre bust is dubious - probably from Amarna - but as it was acquired by the museum in 1906, and Thutmose's workshop was not discovered until 1912, it is unlikely to be from there. However, 'unlikely' does not mean 'impossible' although, as Lutz points out, there must have been plenty of other workshops turning out official portraits of the pharaoh and his family all the time.
I also agree with Lutz that it could be an idealised, 'rejuvenated' portrait, like those done for Amenhotep III after his 1st Jubilee. However, it looks more like a realistic portrait than those of Amenhotep III referred to, and, although we believe Akhenaten celebrated a Jubilee in his 4th year, we have not heard of any later ones - which of course doesn't mean they didn't exist.
On the whole, I think the circumstantial evidence for the Louvre bust points towards a younger member of the royal family, but there is no conclusive proof as of yet. Obviously, the main point is that it's a beautiful, moving piece of art, which underlines the consummate skill and sensibility of the Amarna artist who produced it - in contrast with the grotesque representations of the earlier stages of the reign and the stilted portraits of other reigns.

I think the circumstantial evidence for the Louvre bust points towards a younger member of the royal family

All three busts we have been talking about are ringers for Ahkenaten and no one else, especially when you look at the profile. He was young and he was older, and any youthful portraits of him would look young and slightly different than his older portraits (especially the caricature, gems paatan phase). Everybody's used to seeing him like that, but it was as stylized as the idealized, youthful style of AIII. But it is also easy to see the gams paatan sculptures as a caraciature of that youthful face.

I think the masterpiece Kestner portrait is in the late AIII realistic style, like the recent sculpture unearthed of AIII and Thoth (with the dark stone inclusion on his face) and the avatar (of Tiye?) I am using.

That fits in with the youthful age of the person depicted and points to Ahkenaten as the subject, especially since in profile it can be no one else.

He and Nefertiti had to be a least second cousins or something so why wouln't they look somewhat alike?

In addition to the chin, the mouth is always different, his goes down and hers goes up.

I think the femininity that comes through is because he is a young teen here and not yet a man.
MarcMara:
Artist studios tend to contain many other facets besides current work. There is usually some old stuff that didn't sell or never got finished, and often something the artist is so fond of he won't part with it, like Da Vinci and the Mona Lisa. They also tend to contain other peoples artwork, as artists tend to love to accumulate art, sometimes by barter. So basically the art studio is a hodpe podge of stuff and impossible to define or date.

I was just at your avatar image and I thought, could it be, perhaps, a remain of the missing female part of Paris, Louvre N 831 : Fragment d'un groupe royal d'époque amarnienne ? Do you have the data for the piece at hand? Before I begin to pass here my library...

Hi Lutz,
I have a question about Louvre N831: I read that the bottom was restored. Does that mean it is missing and replaced? The reason I'm curious is the woman would have to be sitting I guess, from the angle of her arm, and it seems odd she'd be sitting on a separate seat. The break looks like it goes along the side of the seat.

I do appreciate your point about artists’ studios, Stephaniep, I am an artist myself and used to do a lot of sculpture, so I know we tend to collect objects and images. (This Left Bank of the Nile you evoke would have been a fascinating place to visit…!)
But the important point here is that we have a series of sculptures of a young boy-king in the "late Amarna style"- including the Berlin bust found at Amarna together with the mature Nefertiti model. The resemblances are obvious, especially between the Kestner bust and the Nefertiti one, but the provenance of the Berlin bust means we could be talking of images of mother and son (or if we want to be ideological about it, images which portray a direct mother-son lineage)

The strip of images above comparing the Nefertiti and boy-king sculptures just underlines the resemblance, it doesn’t prove one is Akhenaten, so I can’t really understand how you assert it “can be no one else”. Can you or anyone please post images of named, clearly identified sculptures of Akhenaten or Tutankhamun that would make this contrast or difference clear (at least visually!)? Many thanks.

In a funny little synchronicity, Stephaniep, on Tuesday when you posted above, I had just finished a portrait of a young mother and was on the way to deliver it to her birthday party. There, her family did the usual embarrassing ritual of taking out her childhood photos and there were gasps of astonishment at how identical she and her young son were at the same age (in fact her son looked more like her than her daughter did). Anyway, I’m still voting for “mother and son” until it can be proved more clearly otherwise…!_________________We All Share The One Heart

(It cannot be a young Akhenaton for the reasons above, as why would a sculptor be making a retrospective statue of a male adult...)

This is why I included the bit about artist studios.

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Can you or anyone please post images of named, clearly identified sculptures of Akhenaten or Tutankhamun that would make this contrast or difference clear (at least visually!)? . . . But the important point here is that we have a series of sculptures of a young boy-king in the "late Amarna style"-

I suggest you re-read the entire post. All three busts under discussion are attested to Ahkenaten. And we are talking about two Amarna busts and one in the in the style of Amenhotep III in a later phase of his career. The age that Ahkenaten would be at the time that art style was being made co-incides with how old he is in the Kestner bust. I think it's a particularly high syle of art. I love it.

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The strip of images above comparing the Nefertiti and boy-king sculptures just underlines the resemblance, it doesn’t prove one is Akhenaten, so I can’t really understand how you assert it “can be no one else”. The resemblances are obvious, especially between the Kestner bust and the Nefertiti one, but the provenance of the Berlin bust means we could be talking of images of mother and son (or if we want to be ideological about it, images which portray a direct mother-son lineage)

The point I was making here was that Ahkenaten has stylistic differences from Nefertiti and the Kestner bust can't be Nefertiti.

I suggest you look at various pharonic profiles. You will see that Ahkenaten's, in all phases of his portrait artwork, is unique in the entire oeuvre of Egyptian art.

Nefertiti, by the way, has no known sons. The family was highly incestuous so it would stand to reason they would look somewhat alike.

Here is a link to a head of Tut (JE 60723) and a half figure (JE 70722), which is about the same age as the Kestner bust. You should easily tell the difference in his face from Ahkenaten. It is the same face on the tomb mask. You will note how different the profile is from Ahkenaten. The frontal view is much like Tut's juvenile portraits. He doesn't change much at all through his oeuvre of portraits.

I thought it was clear I was asking about statues that are “named or identified” by inscriptions – it seems you are referring to labels or names given to objects by Egyptologists 3000 years after they were made. These judgements are subjective and the identities are still debatable. As far as I can tell, there are no inscriptions on these statues. Does anyone know of any?

The “unique” profile of Akhenaten may not be that – a son of Akhenaten could share many of his features, including obviously his profile. So could a younger brother or close relative.
Meanwhile, a son of Nefertiti and Akhenaten would be expected to exhibit a blend of their features – which, as has been noted above, the Kestner bust does. I didn’t make any suggestion that the Kestner bust was Nefertiti – I referred to “the Kestner bust and the Nefertiti one”. I was making the point that the Kestner bust could be a portrait of a son of hers. And it’s simply not proven yet whether Nefertiti did or didn’t have a son.

Judging identity by likeness is a subjective matter, and the styles of different sculptors add to the confusion of identities. You place the Kestner bust in the earlier reign A III on the basis of style, which is certainly an educated guess - but this realistic style is also present at the end of the Amarna period, so it cannot really give any definitive dating.

If you put these busts side by side and compare them, the differences between them are striking, especially in the position of the ear, cheekbones and relationship of the neck and chin…on the basis of simple likeness, they could be two different people.

I’ve seen the pharaonic profiles you mention many times – as you know people are still debating who the different funerary masks actually belonged to. Some suspect Smenkhare, others like Nicholas Reeves believe they belong to Nefertiti herself. A thread on this topic was opened here just a couple of hours ago…_________________We All Share The One Heart

The “unique” profile of Akhenaten may not be that – a son of Akhenaten could share many of his features, including obviously his profile. So could a younger brother or close relative.

Show me one example here of another person (that is labeled at least by modern egyptologists) with that profile who is not Ahkenaten.

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I didn’t make any suggestion that the Kestner bust was Nefertiti

I know you didn't, someone else did. I was only talking to you directly about the art studio.

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but this realistic style is also present at the end of the Amarna period, so it cannot really give any definitive dating.

He's young at the end of AIII's reign and older at the end of his reign. The young Ahkenaten looks much younger than the older one. So the younger bust would have to be in that late AIII style, and it looks in feeling like several other sculptures done during this phase. It's not a Brad Pitt movie, where he starts out old and gets younger as he ages.

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If you put these busts side by side and compare them, the differences between them are striking, especially in the position of the ear, cheekbones and relationship of the neck and chin…on the basis of simple likeness, they could be two different people.

People change as they age and different artists have different interpetations. The three busts look like the same person to the various egyptologists and museums that labeled them.

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I've seen the pharaonic profiles you mention many times – as you know people are still debating who the different funerary masks actually belonged to. Some suspect Smenkhare, others like Nicholas Reeves believe they belong to Nefertiti herself. A thread on this topic was opened here just a couple of hours ago

We are talking about only one Pharonic profile mask, Tut, (not one of the coffins, just the gold mask), and no one doubts it is him. Read the thread or go to Reeves' website. You must admit the profile is quite different than Ahkenaten's.